This doesn’t have anything to do with feminism, but I was wondering if you think it is possible to be in love with 2 people at one time? I will tell you why, but I want my letter on Gallant Girls to stop here. TIA!

From,

Candace Golnik

Clarksville, Maryland

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Dear Gallant Girl Candace,

In short, my quick answer is “yes”, I *do* believe it’s possible to love two people (or possibly more!) at once. If you can love ANYONE, than it should stand to reason that you could love more than one person at one time. Yet…

I do not believe that you can be fully, wholeheartedly IN love with someone if you can love more than just them. In other words, I believe that:

A.) If you love someone else, as well as the one you’re with, chances are you are not in the right relationship with the right person.

B.) If and when you love more than one person, you almost always love one of them more.

—and—

C.) Your heart is not fully committed to any of those you feel love for because your heart is still seeking. Something, somewhere deep down inside of you, is not having all of your love desires met.

I can only speak from personal experience (from past verses present), but no matter how much I have loved some people in my past, I was always still looking for my Mr. Right. This is not to say that I did not love the people I had fallen for, but there was some part of me that knew there was a better match out there for me — someone who would never make me feel as though I was settling. This had absolutely nothing to do with the people I had feelings for; we do not have control over who we fall in love with (or out of love with, for that matter (no one ever WANTS to fall out of love)). This is why matters of the heart are so complicated and unpredictable.

I also know that when the right person comes along, everything else falls away. You feel like you’ve known that person your entire life, and even though you had this enormous and eventful life before them, you simply can’t believe there was ever a day in your life that you didn’t know them! More than anything, you can’t imagine a day of your life without them (even though you have to know you’ll manage and move on if that day should ever come for whatever reason). This is what a “soulmate” is. Many people do not believe in soul mates; I believe that those who don’t have not met theirs yet. ::grin::

But, yes… Before you find your “person”, there will more than likely be a few predecessors. At this point — especially if you’re not becoming exclusive with any of them — you may fall for more than one person at a time. And you know why this is, Gallant Girl Candace? It’s because each one of them has things you love and desire in a relationship and partnership. What your heart is doing when it falls for more than one person at one time is that it is fulfilling needs and wants, yet what it REALLY wants is for all those qualities to be embodied in one body. When we don’t find that, as human beings we continue to look and seek, because we know that deep down we would not be entirely happy with just one of those lovers/partners. We’re trying to build our ideal one in more than one person. That just doesn’t work out for most people, in the long term.

There is nothing abnormal about this. This does not make you wrong in any way, but rather than to settle for loving more than one person, we should think about what EACH of those people deserve, and that is to have *someone’s* whole heart; not just bits and pieces of yours. You deserve this also!

We cannot shut down love, just as much as we cannot force ourselves to stay in it or ward it off when it falls in our lap. This is what makes love the one and only true adventure, as Nikki Giovanni said. <— I have always loved that quote because that is *exactly* what I feel love is: an adventure. Love has no guarantees, no warranties, and no promises you can hold it to. You can hold the person to how they treat you or if you’re going to stay with them in spite of your emotions, but you cannot hold their love in place. Love is purely out of our control. So, if you love more than one person at one time, than that is out of your hands, as well.

When we fall in love with people, many times we fall out of love with them over time. This is always sad, heartbreaking and painful to endure. People change and distance happens between hearts and souls, both emotionally and physically, but when the love was real, we never fully stop loving those people as people and the people they were to us. However, we stop being *in* love with them and we move on. Once we move on and meet *our* person, we suddenly realize that though our feelings were real once before, there was someone out there that would stop us in our tracks and stop us from being able to love anyone else in THAT way. I have a poem where I wrote:

When you fall in love for the last time,

it becomes the first.

It doesn’t make the other loves any less real, it just means they never would have been able to hold ALL of your heart, and by loving more than one person, you know that in your heart of hearts. The heart wants what the heart wants, only sometimes it holds you back from getting everything that the heart needs, and that person out there who fills it, wholly. Completely (even if it’s up to you to complete yourself, first and foremost). My husband always says to me, “I have loved you my entire life, I just didn’t know it then.” For the first time in my life, I know what that means. It took me 38 years to find that and understand that, so have patience, my friend.

I hope this response made some sense to you and that you could identify it. I guess, if you HAVE to ask if it is possible to love more than one person at one time than you already had your own answer. What makes it more confusing is that the answer is both yes AND no.